Woman sentenced to 12 years in ‘dark web’ murder-for-hire plot

A woman was sentenced to 12 years Aug. 27, 2019, to paying more than $12,000 in bitcoins to try to arrange the murder of a woman whose husband she had an affair with. | Adobe Stock Photo

A woman pleaded guilty and was sentenced Tuesday for paying $12,000 in bitcoins to a “dark-web company” last year to hire someone to kill the wife of a man she had an affair with.

Tina Jones, 33, pleaded guilty to a felony count of attempted first-degree murder before DuPage County Judge George Bakalis, according to a statement from the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.

Tina Jones

Bakalis sentenced Jones to 12 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, and she will have to serve at least 85 percent of the sentence before being eligible for parole, prosecutors said.

The producers of the CBS show “48 Hours” contacted Woodridge police April 12, 2018, to report “an individual in Woodridge was involved in a murder-for-hire plot with a dark web entity known as the Sicilian Hitmen International Network,” the state’s attorney’s office said.

Jones, who previously lived in Des Plaines, paid the organization more than $12,000 worth of bitcoins in January to have the Woodridge woman murdered after having an affair with the woman’s husband, prosecutors said. She turned herself in April 17, 2018, but has lived with relatives in Georgia since posting bond April 23, 2018.

“Thankfully, the intended victim, whom the defendant deemed a romantic rival, was unharmed even though Jones carefully planned the murder and paid more than $12,000 in bitcoins to the Sicilian Hitmen International Network to carry out the murder,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in the statement. “This type of pre-meditated criminal scheming is an incredibly serious offense that warrants a serious punishment, as the defendant learned today.”

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